


left hanging

by lovey bear (kuma666)



Series: eulogy for your kneecaps [1]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Engie's Just Trying His Best, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Medic's An Emotional Mess, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-27 11:11:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20759405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuma666/pseuds/lovey%20bear
Summary: Scout does something horribly irreversible. Medic and Engie have to face it.





	left hanging

The sound of a chair banging in the night woke the Medic.

He jolted up quickly in his bed, and almost immediately afterwards his hand went to his nightstand, feeling for his glasses. He had been having a very pleasant dream, a dream in which he had been dancing with a beautiful blue-eyed _fraulein_ in an empty barroom that held nothing but them and the aroma of strudels and tarts. Ah- he found his glasses, at last.

Slipping them on, he stepped out into the hallway. The wooden floorboards were cold under his feet, just as the scalpel he had grabbed as an afterthought was cold against his palm. There was no one else in the corridor with him... or so he thought.

The quiet, distinctly Texan voice made him jump. "What in tarnation was that sound, Doc?"

Medic spun around. He saw the Engineer at the end of the hall, standing by the door of his workshop, head tilted, and calmed down a bit. He shook his head.

"I don't know," he responded. "It sounded like furniture. Do you think that those pesky BLU doppelgangers of ours are trying to get one on us, Dell?"

Engie shrugged, then came a bit closer. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, Medic saw that he had come out armed, too; Engie had a pipe wrench with him, held in a grip that was relaxed but still firm.

"Mayhap." Engie pointed down the corridor with his free hand, towards the opposite end. "Came from over there, sounded like."

Medic followed Engie's finger with his eyes. There were only two rooms down there. "That's where Scout and Heavy are. Are they alright?"

"Only one way to find out, Doc. Let's go."

They headed down the corridor, scalpel and pipe wrench at the ready. They both looked almost comical, Medic in a light blue, pinstriped pajama set, Engie in plaid pajama pants and an old, faded work shirt. Just two grown men tippy-toeing down a hallway in their jammies, they were, and their weapon choices wouldn't even be useful against a gun. _Hilarious._

But the two were not laughing when they reached the doors at the end of the corridor; they were on edge, ready to attack at will.

Suddenly, however, Engie lowered his pipe wrench, chuckled a little. There was a great rumbling, low and loud, coming from behind one of the doors, the sound of a sleeping bear.

"Seems like Misha's okay, huh?" he commented, then was serious again. Medic looked at him, then shook his head slowly.

"That leaves Jeremy, then."

"Sure does."

They turned to the door, with its wooden surface plastered with numerous "keep out" signs, and looked at each other one last time.

"Here goes nothin'," Engie murmured, then turned the doorknob. The door was unlocked.

Slowly, he pushed the door open... and his pipe wrench fell from his hand to the floor with a muted _clunk_. Some kind of choked noise left his throat as he took a shocked step into the room. His usual composure had vanished.

"Boy... what have you done?" he asked Scout, as if Scout could hear him. Behind Engie, Medic let out a reedy, trembling gasp.

"_Mein Gott!"_

Mein Gott, indeed. It seemed that Scout had fallen. From his desk chair, with a rope around his neck. His feet, clad in skintight black socks, dangled only inches above the floor. His face had a horrible plum-purple tint; his eyes bulged from their sockets. Worst of all, his mouth hung open in a futile try for air, his jaw touching his chest, his tongue looking like a dead worm dangling from the whole thing.

"Doc..." Engie started, but Medic was already there. He was on tip-toe, despite his height, sawing at the rope with his scalpel, trying to cut Scout down. It worked, eventually, and Medic caught the younger guy in his arms. Engie saw it all with intense clarity: the way Scout's head lolled on Medic's shoulder, the steam that fogged up Medic's glasses, caused by the hot torrent of tears that ran down his face. Engie knew it had to be hard for the doctor; Medic had seen his fellow mercs badly injured many times, yes, seen to them, but he had never had to deal with a _suicide._

"Doc..." Engie said again. "You can... revive 'im. Right?"

Medic let out a sob, and immediately Engie felt a small flower of fear bloom in his heart. He had never seen the doctor like this.

"_Th__at's... that's exactly the thing!_" Medic wailed. "_I can't!_"

"You _can't?_"

Medic only shook his head. He was in some kind of huddle on the floor, holding Scout (Scout's corpse, anyway) in his arms like a wounded animal.

"Whaddya mean you _can't_, Doc? It worked with Mundy, didn't it?"

Medic sniffled, found some kind of composure, then spoke.

"This is different, Dell." He sniffled again, continued. "I can't... Scout is too much like Tavish now. I can't revive him, not like I did Mr. Mundy. He is like Tavish's eye socket... cursed."

"Cursed?" Engie's voice was only a harsh whisper. Medic nodded again.

"If I did revive him, he would be... be... different." Another sniffle." Too different. He would no longer have a taste for life. He would only do what he did again. _I can't._" With a final sob, Medic lapsed into silence.

Engie only replied with a dejected sigh, a hopeless hissing of air through his teeth.

"What do we do now, then, Doc?"

Medic didn't respond. Engie repeated his sigh. He stepped over, kneeled down beside Medic and Scout. He put one arm around Medic's shaking form, the other around Scout.

"Yeah. I get that."

They stayed that way, holding each other, for the rest of the night. When morning came, they were still like that. When Soldier found them, they were _still_ like that, and Scout's body had long succumbed to the iron grip of rigor. Scout was the dead one, but the quiet atmosphere that he left in his wake kept the entire team feel like they were the ones that were left hanging.


End file.
